Drop Dead Healthy

How To Become The Healthiest Man Alive

I once wrote an article on a movement called Radical Honesty, where practitioners remove the filter between the brain and the mouth. The article’s headline was "I Think You’re Fat." It was an extremely unpleasant experience. I wonder if Vlad is a member of that group, too.

Erwan gives us a preworkout talk on the importance of exercising out in nature. He points to the rocks and hills and uneven ground. “This is better than a gym. It’s adaptive for our bodies and our brains."

"You never have this in a gym, because there you do one muscle, then another muscle.”

He mimes a biceps curl.

“It’s not only inefficient, it’s boring.”

Our first exercise will be running. We go in single file, crunching through the leaves, dodging broken bottles and jutting rocks.

We run as Erwan instructed. Or at least try. We’re supposed to run elegantly, like an animal. Keep the muscles relaxed, lean forward, and let gravity pull you ahead. Don’t stomp—take short steps and land lightly on your toes. Don’t pump your arms, just let them dangle naturally by your side.

It feels the exact opposite of natural to me, who is used to my old arm-pumping, foot-stomping running. But maybe it’ll become natural over time.

As we round a tree, I step on a glass splinter, barely suppressing a yelp. I don’t tell anyone, as I don’t want to be the whiner. When we come full circle, we stop to catch our breath.

“How much do you run every day?” Vlad asks Erwan.

“I don’t believe in spreadsheets or clocking my heart rate. I do what feels natural and primal. One day I might run five minutes. Another day I might run three hours without stopping.”

For our next exercise, we get more primal. We get down on all fours and clamber along a forty-foot fallen log. The idea is to move as if you’re a tiger stalking prey.“It’s almost like swimming on the log,” says Erwan. “You keep all your muscles relaxed.”

Erwan hops on the log, his back flat, and prowls away.

We all follow. It’s tricky. My foot keeps slipping, and it’s a strain on my shoulders. I try to prowl like a tiger, but end up scurrying like a monkey.

We dismount, and Erwan gives us another pep talk. “In yoga, they say that the mind and body are in touch.” He does a mocking California-surfer-dude accent here—or at least a California surfer dude from Provence. “That’s fine. But that’s not enough. You need to have a mind-body-nature connection.”

At this point, the TV producers want a shot of John and Erwan interacting with nature by climbing a tree. So Vlad, Rahsaan, and I have some free time to hang around and chat.

“You have a lot of intravascular fat—fat in between the muscles. If you were a cow, I could make a lot of tallow out of you.”

“Uh-huh.”

I know I should be angry. So far Vlad has insulted my body twice in the span of a half hour. But there’s something disarming—maybe even charming—about his complete lack of social graces. He’s like my five-year-old.

The talk turns to diet, as it often does in caveman circles. Vlad extols the virtue of raw grass-fed beef.

“I’ve found a great supplier of cow brains,” he says.

Rahsaan is interested. “Will you e-mail me the info?”

“Don’t you get sick from eating raw food?” asks the German TVproducer.

“No, I haven’t yet. No worms. Also, in France, parasites aresometimes used in medicine. So it’s possible we have a symbiotic relationship with them.”

Over the summer, Vlad adds, he smushed a bunch of insects together and had them for a meal. “A lot of protein,” he said.

As you might imagine, Vlad has no patience for vegans. He’s dated a couple over the years. “I converted one to Paleo on the first date—but it didn’t work out.”

The lack of women in the Paleo movement is a recurring source of frustration. Vlad tells how he had a date over to his apartment, but she left because she thought the bathroom was too dirty.

For the first time, I feel a bit bad for Vlad. I want to tell him that it might be easier to date if he was a little more flexible with his no-hygiene-products rule. He won’t use deodorant or toothpaste. “I will floss my teeth because chimps have been known to floss their teeth.”

For the next exercise, someone suggests lifting a boulder, but we have trouble finding large rocks. Erwan thinks it would be better if all of us carried a log on our shoulders.

The French TV producer is talking quickly and with seeming concern to Erwan. I can’t understand what she’s saying, but I do hear the word dangereux.

Erwan shakes his head. “Ce n’est pas dangereux.”

Hmm. That doesn’t sound good. We get in line, and on the count of three, we heave a log onto our shoulders. It’s as thick as a telephone pole, and my knees buckle a bit before I regain my balance.

After we stagger forward about ten yards, Erwan shouts that it’s time to toss it back onto the ground. We all grunt, and the log thumps to the dirt.